Future Primitive

Geoff Oelsner has built a following as a performer both of his own songs and of poems which he sometimes sets to music or chants and recites to the accompaniment of guitar, harmonica, dulcimer, autoharp, harmonium, and the shruti box (a drone instrument from India). He has released 2 CD’s of original songs, Morning Branches and Ordinary Mystery with musician friends, including Kelly Mulhollan and Leslie. Geoff has published a collection of his poetry, Native Joy: poems songs visions dreams (1963-2003) (2003, Trafford) and his work has been featured in several other books, including Writing Poetry from the Inside Out by Sandford Lyne (Sourcebooks Inc., 2007). His new book, A Country Where All Colors Are Sacred and Alive, A Memoir of Non-Ordinary Experience and Collaboration with Nature (2012) is now available from Lorian Press.

A Buddhist meditator since 1974, Geoff founded the Buddhist Meditation and Spiritual Support Group in 1995. As a licensed certified social worker in private practice of psychotherapy in Arkansas since 1982, Geoff also utilizes poetry therapy with selected clients in psychotherapy. He is committed to sharing the healing and inspirational power of poetry, music, and story with the community.

A long time environmental activist and researcher, Geoff co-authored a book titled Fighting Radiation and Chemical Pollutants with Foods, Herbs,and Vitamins (1992). He is presently involved in several environmental initiatives, including the Psi-Sci Alliance project, which brings together established climate scientists with highly qualified intuitives to innovate new approaches to addressing and ameliorating climate change.

www.geoffoelsner.com

Geoff Oelsner speaks with Joanna about his deep love and connection with the natural world, transpersonal experiences in Nature, the emergence of a spiritual form of environmental activism…

Music: “The Sacred Hoop” (from Morning Branches) by Geoff Oelsner.

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Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Ring of Power, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, The Millionth Circle, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine and Urgent Message from Mother, and Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet.

She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Transpersonal Association. She was a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healing’s “Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award”, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She was in two acclaimed documentaries, the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, and the Canadian Film Board’s Goddess Remembered.

www.jeanbolen.com

Jean speaks with Joanna about the “tree persons”; nurturing a heart-connected activism; morphic fields, circles of support and critical mass; gnostic knowledge…

Music: “At The Zeergen-Grassy Mountain” from World Music Library – Mongolian Songs

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Speakers at Bioneers By The Bay Connecting For Change (2011)

John Francis, Ph.D.,  is an American environmentalist nicknamed the planetwalker. After witnessing the devastation caused by a 1971 oil spill in San Francisco Bay, he stopped riding in motorized vehicles, a vow which lasted 22 years from 1972 until 1994.  Several months later, to stop the arguments about the power of one person’s actions, he took a vow of silence. From 1973 until 1990, he also spent 17 years voluntarily silent. During that time Dr. Francis walked across the United States earning a B.A at Southern  Oregon State College, an M.S. in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in land resources at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence. and The Ragged Edge of Silence: Finding Peace in a Noisy World

John speaks with Joanna about sustainability as caring for each other, rediscovering ourselves, inhabiting the present moment, the value of the social networks, using technology to raise our consciousness.

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Martha Elena Llano Serna is a graphic designer, documentary photographer, and expert in strategic thinking for environmental conservation. She is the founder of “SENTIR”, an educational project about endangered species and ecosystems that has become a Foundation which promotes sustainable development in Colombia. She has lived in the Colombian Pacific (Pijiba), helping to identify photographically the Humpback Whale. She lives in El Robledal Nature Preserve, where she works in environmental conservation, ecotourism and actively supports local networks.

http://www.sentir.org/
http://www.bioneers.org/conference

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Kami McBride has inspired thousands of people to use herbs in their daily lives for health and wellness. She teaches experiential herbal programs in reviving the art of home use of herbal medicine. Her work is centered in sustainable wellness practices, creating self-reliance and revitalizing our relationship with the plant world. She is the author of Herbal Kitchen.

www.livingawareness.com

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Osprey Orielle Lake, MA is an artist, writer, and lifelong advocate of social and environmental justice issues. She is the Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus and on the governing Board of Praxis Peace Institute. She is the Founder/Artist of the International Cheemah Monument Project, creating 18 foot bronze sculpture monuments for locations around the world, where people can ponder a better future for the earth and humanity. Her themes concern new cultural narratives and the way public imagery and stories either enhance or distance our relationship with the Earth. Osprey studied Ancient History and Biology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon where her focus was on an Ecological Impact Study of the Oregon river system. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz where her reports on the use of phenoxy herbicides and alternative methods for pest management played a central role in Santa Cruz County’s re-evaluation of herbicide use. She received her MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Her recent book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature (2010), delves into a new kinship with nature while acknowledging the treasures of urban life and the unique stake each person has in resolving critical and timely challenges.

www.ospreyoriellelake.com

Orielle speaks with Joanna about reconnecting with Nature in urban life, the balance between high technology and hand-made things, women leadership and climate situation, indigenous wisdom and partnership model, Nature as teacher, open to the beauty and awe of the “big conversation”, Frau Holle and other female archetypes of Nature, art and environmental awareness, honoring the rights of the Earth…

Music:”Sanza” (from Echoes Of The Forest – Music of the Central African Pygmies)

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Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist.  Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing modern civilization and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S. in Mineral Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University.

www.derrickjensen.org

Derrick speaks with Joanna about words and action for social change, abuse as identity in the dominant culture, the importance of naming the unspeakable, putting nature first, “to speak truth about power”, preparing the transition towards a sustainable culture…

Music: “Ancient Trees” (from On the wing) by Stephan Micus

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Marian Van Eyk McCain, originally a social worker, and then for many years a transpersonal psychotherapist, workshop leader and health educator, now concentrates on writing, and environmental activism. She writes on a number of subjects, including ‘Wellness,’ stress-management, psychology, personal development, women’s health and spirituality, conscious, ‘zestful’ ageing, environmental issues, organic food production and alternative technology. Her most recent work has been as Editor of what has been hailed as the definitive book on green spirituality, GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness (O Books, 2010), Downshifting Made Easy: How to plan for your planet-friendly future (O Books, 2011) and her first, full-length novel, The Bird Menders. She is also secretary of the Wholesome Food Association. She runs a women’s group and a writer’s circle, is active in her local community, grows organic vegetables, goes for long walks, reads a lot and loves to dance.

www.elderwoman.org

Marian speaks with Joanna about conscious ageing, combining simplicity with modernity,green spirituality, the collective shift of consciousness, developing the “enough switch”…

Music: “We Build Fires” (from Scotland – World Network 32) by The Poozies

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Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over forty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.   With her husband, writer/healer Michael Ortiz Hill, she has introduced the concept of Daré, meaning Council, to North America.

She is the author of many books, the most recent: La Negra y Blanca (“a novel of the Conquest of the Americas and of hope, where wisdom leaks through misty realms between memory and imagination”).

www.deenametzger.com

Deena speaks with Joanna about the characters of her latest book “La Negra y Blanca”, grounded visions, the coming shift, making alliances and restoring a right relationship with the Earth and all beings, “the conquest never ended”, the helping guide of the ancestors, the process of peace-making, “the way of story”…

Music: “No soy de aquí ni soy de allá” (I’m not from here, I’m not from there) by Facundo Cabral

Deena’s Photo: courtesy www.deenametzger.com

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John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia.

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Since 1979 he has been involved in the direct actions which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting Councils of All Beings and other re-Earth ing workshops  around the world for 25 years. In the US, his workshops have been hosted by Esalen, Omega, Naropa and the California Institute of Integral Studies. With Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Professor Arne Naess, he wrote “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” (New Society Publishers) which has now been translated into 10 languages. He is an accomplished bard, songwriter and film-maker and has produced 5 albums of environmental songs and numerous films www.rainforestinfo.org.au/video.htm

From 1984 to the present he has traveled around the world each year with roadshows raising awareness about the plight of the rainforests and raising funding for their protection. In 2007 he launched the Rainforest Information Centre’s climate change campaign and has offered “Climate Change, Despair & Empowerment” presentations and workshops in Australia, Canada and the US. www.rainforestinfo.org.au/climate/roadshow.htm

John speaks with Joanna about “climate change, despair and empowerment”, the evolutionary importance of human feeling, working ecologically with Nature, his experience in the reforestation project at Arunachala, experiential tip ecology practices,  Earth Changes, his present work, his love of the earth…

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Dr Hugh Wheir graduated from Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine in 1979 and operated a successful and innovative veterinary practice in Santa Fe for many years. A pioneer in animal acupuncture and natural healing, Dr Wheir was trained by Sensei Nakazono in the Kototama School of Japanse acupuncture and practiced on humans with many remarkable healing successes before he turned his full attention to animals. Dr Wheir has been  an advocate for humane population control of domestic animals and wildlife and the protection of endangered species, including Mexican sea turtles and African elephants. He has conducted hundreds of spay-neuter clinics in the US and Latin America through the organization he founded, Animal Alliance, and has lectured widely, collaborating with the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International and many other foundations and institutions. He now serves on the board of Alliance for the Earth, Elephants in Crisis, and The Biosphere Foundation – and is excited to be a hands-on veterinarian once again!

Dr Wheir’s veterinary practice specializes in animal acupuncture and alternative approaches to health and healing, herbal medicine, diet and neutraceutical support for dogs, cats and horses. He offers exams, consultations, diagnosis, second opinions, geriatric care, management of chronic pain, lameness and paralysis and…..having successfully treated over 20,000 horses with acupuncture, Dr Wheir’s rapport with horses is extraordinary.

Hugh’s commitment is to create a field of healing intention in close collaboration with concerned clients to develop understanding & balanced energy for their animals. His expertise and years of tried and true natural solutions has resulted in many herbal remedies that anyone can apply.

Anyone interested in consulting with Dr Hugh Wheir on natural animal health care and healing and management or treatment of many common diseases can contact him at     allanimals AT igc DOT org

elephantsincrisis.org/index/drwheir

earthtreasurevase.org/about-us/board/

Hugh speaks with Joanna about his life-long dedication to our animal companions, his very first treatment in animal acupuncture, inter-species communication, meeting the white lions of Timbavati…

Music: “Hey Da Ba Doom” (from The Codona Trilogy) by Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos & Colin Walcott

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From a lineage of 15 generations of learned practitioners of the Krishna Yajur Veda, Shri Vivek is the main teacher and principal of Sri Krsna-Yajurveda Pathasala, a school in Satara, India, which specializes in the revitalization of the Oral Tradition of the Vedas. Shri Vivek is an accomplished Vedic astrologer and is widely known for his evocative Vedic chanting and his love of performing yajna (Vedic fire ritual). In addition, he is recognized for his accessible and fascinating explanations of Vedic philosophy, ritual and culture.

www.vedikaglobal.org/vedika_gurukula/faculty/SriGodbole.html

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Shri Vivek speaks with Joanna about the Vedic tradition, the fire ritual, retrieving our relationship with Mother Earth…

Music: “We are the Ones“, live music from the conference

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Tata Erick González, also known by his Tolteca-Azteca name OmeAkaEhekatl and his Haida tribal name Gaada (supernatural light). Tata Erick is a lineage-holder and Daykeeper of the Cakchikel Maya of Guatemala. He trained in the ceremonial way for 32 years with indigenous healers and medicine people from North, Central, and South America and was ceremonially initiated as a Mayan Aj Qij (staff of light) in 1994. He is founder of Earth Peoples United that is creating two models of spiritual land stewardship: one in Guatemala on the shores of Lake Atitlan, and one north of Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Erick speaks Joanna about essential aspects of the Mayan culture, the Mayan understanding of 2012 – the ending of the Fifth Sun…and the beginning of a new era.

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Raina Atareta Ferris is a member of the Māori Ngāti Kahungunu iwi (tribe) of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Tracing her heritage through a lineage of warrior women, Raina lives rurally in the small township of Porangahau.  From an early age, Raina learned the rituals entrusted to her family, caretakers of the local marae (meeting grounds). Today she is helping her people reclaim their ancestral wisdom which had been watered down by several generations of colonization and missionary presence. Her particular emphasis is on the role of Māori women in the spiritual welfare of the marae and the community.

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Raina speaks with Joanna about her ancestral culture, being a warrior woman, trauma and resilience…

Music: “We are the Ones“, Live Music at the Conference

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Kawan Sangaa Woody Morrison began his training as a History Keeper for the Haida people at the age of three. Heir to the chief of the Whale House, he has sat in ceremony with tribal elders from around the world and has been an active planner and participant in international conferences on environmental, economic and health issues. He is president of the Vancouver Society of Storytelling and on the board of directors of Wisdom of the Elders, a non-profit organization that records and preserves indigeous oral traditions and cultural arts in order to regenerate the greatness of culture among native peoples.

www.wisdomoftheelders.org

www.ancientwisdomrising.com

Woody Morrison speaks with Joanna about the indigenous perception of time, storytelling and humor, the communication with whales and the Earth, the soul and the breath of life, the  cultural discrimination against native culture, sustainable societies…

Music: “We are the Ones“, Live Music at the Conference

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Dr. Jamie K. Reaser is a practitioner and teacher of ecopsychology, nature-based spirituality, and various approaches to expanding human consciousness, as well as a conservation ecologist, poet, writer, artist, and homesteader-in-progress. She has extensive training in leadership development, communications, conflict transformation, dream work, ceremonial design, wilderness rites-of-passage, and group facilitation, and has studied traditional knowledge and healing practices with community and indigenous leaders from around the world.

Jamie has a passion for bringing people into their hearts, inspiring the heartbeat of community, and, ultimately, empowering people to live with a heart-felt dedication to Mother Earth. She serves as a guide for Animas Valley Institute, and makes her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her books, focused on the interface of nature and human nature: She is Editor of the Courting the Wild Series and author of – among others - Huntley Meadows: A Naturalist’s Journal in Verse, and the forthcoming Note to Self: Poems for Changing the World From the Inside Out.

www.jamiekreaser.com

Jamie speaks with Joanna about embracing our woundedness as a rite of passage, ceremony as soul dialogue with Nature, heart consciousness, poetry ans revelation, care taking of humans/Nature, and an invitation to the audience…

Music: “Kadarchynyn Yry/Shepards’ song” (from Five Elements) by Ay-Kherel (Ray of Moonlight)

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Mae-Wan Ho, Director of ISIS (Institute of Science and Society), gained her B.Sc. in Biology and Ph. D. in Biochemistry from Hong Kong University and began postdoctoral research in human biochemical genetics in University of California at San Diego. She soon won a competitive Fellowship of the National Genetics Foundation, USA, which enabled her to further her research in London University. She became Lecturer in Genetics, then Reader in Biology, and currently Senior Research Fellow at the Open University, UK, where she has continued an outstanding career in research and teaching across many disciplines, including molecular genetics. She is well-known as a leading exponent of a new science of the organism which has implications for holistic health and sustainable systems, and is currently visiting Professor of Biophysics in University of Catania, Sicily.  Her written materials on genetic engineering and related issues (including a best-selling book) have been translated into many languages; and have been used by public interest organizations all over the world in submissions to their governments and posted on many websites. She has participated in numerous debates, lectures, and interviews for radio, TV, newspapers and magazines in more than 20 countries around the world. She has over 200 publications including 10 books. http://www.i-sis.org.uk

Mae-Wan speaks with Joanna about “quantum jazz biology”, the transition phase we are experiencing, the organic revolution, science/art/life…

Music: “Zarabanda” (from ‘Le Voyage de Sahar’) by Anouar Brahem

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David Spangler is an internationally known spiritual teacher and writer. Instrumental in helping establish Findhorn in northern Scotland.

In 1974 Spangler helped the social philosopher and cultural critic William Irwin Thompson, to found the Lindisfarne Association and became one of the first Lindisfarne Fellows, a group of scientists, artists, religious teachers, political activists, economists, and visionaries whose number included Gregory Bateson, Elaine Pagels, E. F. Schumacher, Stewart Brand, Paul Hawken, James Lovelock, and Paul Winter, among others.

His themes have included the emergence of a holistic culture, the nature of personal sacredness, our participation in a coevolving, co-creative universe, partnering, and working with spiritual realms, our responsibility to the earth and to each other, the spiritual nature and power of our individuality, and our calling to be of service at this crucial time of world history. Many of these themes come together in his primary work, which is the development of a spiritual perspective and practice called Incarnational Spirituality.

His books include, among others, Emergence; The Call; Everyday Miracles; Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent; Blessing: The Art and the Practice, and Subtle Worlds: An Explorer’s Field Notes.

David speaks with Joanna about earth-oriented/higher-order spirituality, his experience of the soul and its relationship to embodiment, the essential quality of playfulness, holopoesis, the second ecology of Spirit… among other topics.

http://www.lorian.org/davidspage.html

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Robert Wolff is a social psychologist and is the author of Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing, also A Book of Dreams and What It Is to Be Human: Hope Lies in Our Ability to Bring Back to Awareness. Some of Robert’s essays and photographs are available on his website.

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Part 2 of an interview with Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). The second interview is about the Psychedelics and Ecology MAPS Bulletin, volume 19, number 1, edited by David Jay Brown.

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Bill Plotkin, PhD, has been a psychotherapist, research psychologist, rock musician, river runner, professor of psychology, and mountain-bike racer. As a research psychologist, he studied dreams and nonordinary states of consciousness achieved through meditation, biofeedback, and hypnosis. The founder and president of Animas Valley Institute, he has guided thousands of people through initiatory passages in nature since 1980. Currently an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness guide, he leads a variety of experiential, nature-based individuation programs. He is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche and Nature and the Human Mind.

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Jorge Conesa-Sevilla is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Northland College, Ashland Wisconsin. In addition to writing Ecological Outcome Psychological Theory and Ecopsychology as Ultimate Force Psychology: A Biosemiotic Approach to Nature Estrangement and Nature Alienation, he has published many articles in the areas of semiotics, ecopsychological biosemiotics, and environmental philosophy. In 1989 he received a B.A. (triple-special major–Whole Human) combining psychobiology, Eastern religion and biology from Humboldt State University in California. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in experimental psychology from The University of Toledo, Ohio. He is a co-founder of the European Ecopsychology Society.

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interviews David Abram, cultural ecologist, philosopher, performance artist, founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics. He is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, for which he received the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

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Dieter Hagenbach is the president and founder of the Gaia Media Foundation, a non profit organization founded in 1993 and based in Basel, Switzerland, which conveys a holistic and up to date understanding of the potential of the human consciousness.

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interview featuring Ron Lampi, philosopher-astrologer-poet-writer and performance artist. Ron has a large body of poetic work that is only now becoming available. He sees himself as the bard who sings of his New Age Vision, and, on a local level, as poet of Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, in California, his place of residence for over 25 years.

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interviews John Lash, co-founder and principle author of www.metahistory.org and one of the foremost exponents of the power of myth to direct and shape not only the life of an individual but history itself. Joanna interviews John about his upcoming book, Not in His Image.

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